Every year on January 1st—for fifty rowdy, enduring, and improbable years—The Poetry Project and its friends, lovers, and co-conspirators have gathered for the New Year’s Day Marathon. What began as a reading of thirty-odd poets has grown into a twelve-hour-long spectacle of 150 performances. The New Year’s Day Marathon is The Poetry Project’s signature event and our calling card, an untameable celebration of the horizon of language, the act of devotion, and the edge of experiment that is avant-garde poetry and performance. A nycthemeral testament to centering the margin, to the weird as social practice, the New Year’s Day Marathon is real lived and living proof that poetry is the revelator, the subterranean taste- and troublemaker of the literary arts and downtown cultural scene, and a true accomplice to social change.

The New Year’s Day Marathon is a party/afterparty with a mind of its own. It’s an uncanny experience that is both a real event and a mutually agreed upon fever-dream—an enormous feat and group effort that also sort of just happens, that reminds us we are happening too. It’s a place where like-minded freaks gather, where we go to see and be seen. It is our annual commitment to the belief that if we can do it together then we should do it together; it’s where we go to fall in love with poetry, with each other, with a utopia that isn’t here yet, with the utopia that’s always been here. The Marathon is the chicest, strangest sustainer, and the only way we know how to begin the new year.

It is also The Poetry Project’s biggest fundraiser. The money raised at the New Year’s Day Marathon supports: over 65 events each year that reach thousands of attendees around the world; a breadth of creative and scholarly publications; writing fellowships; emerging writer prizes; the hundreds of workshop attendees who join us each season; and the payments we make to the 500+ teachers, performers, readers, editors, technicians, lecturers, writers, curators, scholars, and critics we program each year. The Marathon is crucial to maintaining the working and learning community, the alternative economy of poetry, and the cultural anti-enterprise we have been collectively authoring for more than half a century.

We hope you can join us on January 1st, 2024 for The Poetry Project’s 50th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon. We are stunned to be celebrating this golden anniversary. We hope you’ll be there too.

The Poetry Project’s 50th Annual New Year’s Day Marathon will begin at 11AM on January 1st and go to about midnight. The event will be divided into two parts: 11AM–5PM and 6PM–midnight, with an hour break in between. During the hour break, the sanctuary will be cleared so that we can reset the space.

Tickets are now available for Part One and Part Two of the Marathon. If you would like to attend both parts, please buy tickets to both! Tickets for both parts of the Marathon will also be available at the door.

Part One: Bahaar Ahsan, Ashna Ali, Mirene Arsanios, Ka Baird, Lauren Bakst, Ivanna Baranova, Jaye Bartell, Eddie Berrigan, Ama Birch, Emily Brandt, Lee Ann Brown, IV Castellanos, Zoë and Maia Chao, Claire Chase, Che Chen, Todd Colby, Lydia Cortés, Brenda Coultas, Maxe Crandall, Dana Ysabel Dela Cruz, Marcos de la Fuente, Garrett Devoe, Douglas Dunn, Marcella Durand, devynn emory, Samuel Espíndola Hernández, Betsy Fagin, Alan Felsenthal, Foamola, Joshua Garcia, John Godfrey, Gia Gonzales, Steph Gray, Anna Gurton-Wachter, Miguel Gutierrez, Odetta Hartman, Sky Hopinka, Erica Hunt, Emily Johnson, Patricia Spears Jones, Sahar Khraibani, David Kirschenbaum, jaamil olawale kosoko, Muyassar Yousef Kurdi, Yaz Lancaster, Matt Longabucco, Greg Masters, Tracey McTague, Jennifer Miller, Dave Morse, Caelan Nardone, Jeannine Otis, Annie-B Parson, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, m.s. redcherries, Bob Rosenthal, Judah Rubin, Dusty Childers and Frank Schablewski, Collier Schorr, Sarah Schulman, Eleni Sikelianos, Sing in Solidarity, Charles Theonia, Edwin Torres, Tony Towle, Don Yorty

Part Two: Lena Pervez Afridi, Rachel Allen, Jonathan Aprea, Penny Arcade, Tyler Ashley, hannah baer, Jo Barchi, James Barickman, Morgan Bassichis, Jim Behrle, Anselm Berrigan, Malcolm-x Betts, Tess Brown-Lavoie, CAConrad, Candystore, Anna Cataldo, Wo Chan, Chiquitita, Yoshiko Chuma, Kyle Dacuyan, Ted Dodson, Francesca D’Uva, Tess Dworman, Mel Elberg, Ben Fama, Will Farris, Carolyn Ferrucci, Kay Gabriel, Cecilia Gentili, Tilghman Goldsborough, Rainer Diana Hamilton, Nile Harris, Kaleem Hawa, Laura Henriksen, Niall Jones, Elena Comay del Junco, Amirtha Kidambi, Kinlaw, Shiv Kotecha, Benjamin Krusling, Rachel Levitsky, Erin Markey, Sam Max, Noa Mendoza, Ty Mitchell, Roberto Montes, Thurston Moore, Fred Moten, Ayaz Muratoglu, Eileen Myles, Laura Ortman, Sarah Nicole Prickett, Matt Proctor, E.R. Pulgar, Elliot Reed, DAYS (Ethan Philbrick & Ned Riseley), Kim Rosenfield, Victoria Ruiz, Zoé Samudzi, Jasmine Sanders, Early Shinada, H. Sinno, Pamela Sneed, Max Steele, Jordan Tannahill, Conrad Tao, Cecilia Vicuña, Morgan Vō, David Velasco, Anne Waldman, Harron Walker, Nicole Wallace, Emily XYZ and Myers Bartlett, Matvei Yankelevich, Lix Zackeroff

More performers and hour-by-hour lineups TBA, and stay tuned for more information on tarot readings with CAConrad!

The entire event will also be livestreamed. Livestream tickets are available for a suggested donation of $5–15